What the SCO/IBM scrap means for users

No company currently evaluating or conducting trials of the open source Linux operating system could fail to be concerned by the recent high profile threats made by SCO against IBM and the wider Unix and Linux communities.

The stakes were recently raised when SCO suspended all sales of its distribution of Linux and warned rivals and users alike that they face legal action if they are found to be using its code in their software.

Adding to the controversy, SCO has claimed that it owns core intellectual property contained within all commercial distributions of Linux, including the kernel itself. It is so confident of its claims that it has stopped sales "until attendant risks with Linux are better understood".

The company sent letters to 1,500 international Linux users telling them that they may be liable for using SCO's code. President and chief executive Darl McBride warned that "legal liability may arise [which] may also rest with the end user".

The question on the lips of many IT managers is what SCO's highly controversial action actually means for companies that have already deployed Linux or are considering rolling out the operating system.

The answer to this question, according to industry experts, is that it means virtually nothing. Tony Lock, chief analyst at Bloor Research, said that for the vast majority of IT managers SCO's action would have no impact.

"I wouldn't worry at all if I was that man in the street as it's just vendors trying to kick each other and see what they can get," he told vnunet.com.

"In the case of SCO it's about cash and, probably more importantly, publicity. It's about 'We are SCO and people have forgotten about us. If we can get some money from this then great, but mainly it's about column inches.'

"Users should ignore this apart from the fact that it's jolly good sport. In actual end-user terms, although it may not seem like it, it's just a bit of fun really.

"It's quite interesting the way in which Microsoft fuelled the flames by buying a licence from SCO, probably just so it could turn around and say that it was not anti-Linux."

According to Lock, the best advice for end users is to just watch and laugh. "It's not going to end up costing any end user money because the vendors are not going to drop anybody in it," he explained.

"The last thing that SCO would want to do would be to kill any customers, because this would just be cutting off its nose to spite its face. For IBM and the other firms on the end of the action it may mean that margins have to be tightened if SCO does win its legal action, but that's a very, very big if."

Clive Longbottom, strategy analyst at research firm Quocirca, suggested that the most likely winner in the legal battle would be SCO rival Red Hat because SCO's move may fatally wound the UnitedLinux consortium of which it is a founder.

"When you look at the Linux market, it's pretty much going the way we predicted with the smaller players having a tough time of it," he said.

"For the actual software distributions, there's only really one player in the enterprise, since UnitedLinux is fragmented after the SCO legal action, and that's Red Hat."

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